Create Melted Metal Text Effect in Photoshop

In this tutorial, I will show you how you can create this melted metal text effect in Photoshop. We will mainly go through the use of layer blending options, image adjustments, and various filter effects which you use to produce this cool text effect.

This is an intermediate level tutorial so some steps can be tricky, but why not have a try!

Note: The Photoshop tutorial is done in CS6 – therefore some screenshot may have slighting different layout as in the earlier version. Some brushes are exclusive to Photoshop CS6.

Here is a preview of the final effect I have for this tutorial: (click to enlarge)

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Step 1

Create a new document sized 1290px * 720px with black background. Load the metal texture into Photoshop and select a piece from it, then copy and paste the selection over to our document. Use the Free Transform tool to scale and distort this new layer, as shown below:

Use a soft eraser, remove/fade the edges as shown below:

Apply the following levels adjustment layer to this texture:

Then create a new layer above the previous layers, use a soft white brush and paint a dot in the centre as shown below:

Change the blending mode of this new light layer to “Overlay”:

and here is the effect so far:

Step 2

Let’s type some texts onto our document, using the font we downloaded at the beginning of the tutorial, set the font color to dark grey:

Apply the following layer blending options to this text effect:

Bevel and Emboss

Inner Shadow

Gradient Overlay

Pattern Overlay

Drop Shadow

and here is the effect so far:

Step 3

We can now add some metal texture over the text. Load the selection of the text layer and move it over to the metal texture:

Copy and paste the selection to our document, and set the blending mode to “Hard Light”:

Add the following adjustment layers as clipping mask to this metal layer:

Levels

Curves

Create a new above all the previous layers, load the selection of the text layer, select the rectangular marquee tool and right-click on the selection, then choose the “Stroke” option:

Apply the following stroke options:

As you can see, now we can a red stroke line outside the text:

Use a soft eraser tool to remove parts of the red stroke line:

This adds variety into the text and here is the effect so far:

Step 4

In order to add some more metal pieces onto our document, we can go back to the metal texture and select a piece as shown below:

Copy and paste the selection over to our document and desaturate the metal texture. Duplicate the metal texture layer a few more times and scatter them around canvas:

Hint: you can use the Free Transform tool to adjust the angel and shape of the metal texture, also try adjusting the layer opacity of the metal layers to add more depth to your image.

We can add some fire texture over the metal – so load the fire image into Photoshop and select a piece as shown below:

Copy and paste the selection over to our document, and use the free transform to manipulate the fire texture into different shapes:

Make sure you explore different layer blending options (screen, hard light, vivid light) for the fire texture and see what result they bring you:

Step 5

We can now add some filter effect to the text to form the melted effect. Firstly flatten the image, duplicate the background layer and apply the following Ocean Ripple Filter:

Then duplicate this layer again, and apply the following Accented Edges filter:

Change the layer blending mode of the Accented Edges layer to “Difference”:

Then apply the following layer mask on this Accented Edge layer:

and here is the effect so far:

Add the following image adjustment layer on top to fine-tune the colors a bit:

Selective Color

Curves

and here is the final effect: (click to enlarge)

Hope you enjoy this tutorial and find it useful. Drop me a comment below if you have any question.

My name is James and I have been using Photoshop since version 5.0 (long time ago!). I am the Digital Media Manager for a local mid-size wholesale business, where I use Photoshop almost every day. PSD Vault is my spare time hobby and I write majority of the Photoshop tutorials and articles here. I hope you enjoy my blog, and feel free to leave a comment or contact me if you have any questions.

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